We have been running a sharepoint services 3.0 installation with MS Project Server 2003 (yeah I know old stuff but it was what was here when I started not long ago)

Recently out of the blue the PWA site where we do timesheets and OLAP cubes for costing information on our projects went down. It all occured after I ran an update on our Windows 2003 server and now I cannot open the Sharepoint 3.0 Central Administration or anything else related to the site that existed.

Can someone please help me find the database information so I can retrieve it and possible try to restore the data somehow? We started up a new Sharepoint site with Sharepoint 2013, SQL Server 2012, and Project Server 2013 but it is really important to be able to at least get back our data from the other installation as it contained a lot of "costing" information.

My database was a local SQL instance on the server (not remote). Ideally, I would like to find the database and perhaps import it into a different instance so I can get the data out of it...if this is even possible. The strange thing is that when I try to view it in SQL Enterprise Manager, I get a message that says "MMC could not create the snap-in"...also, the SQL Server Service Manager shows the server but shows it as stopped and when I click on start/continue....it does nothing.

Strangely however, when I go into "Analysis Manager" it shows my server with a green triangle icon (indicating it is running) and I see our varous OLAP cubes..its like the information is there but there is no SQL Server Service running?...i don't get it.

The default location for WSS 3.0 databases is "C:\Windows\SYSMSI\SSEE\MSSQL.2005\MSSQL\Data\" You can try to look there for the MDF and log files.

The main databases you’ll want to move will be the content database, default named WSS_Content.mdf and maybe the config db, named Sharepoint_Config_%randomnumbers%.mdf.

You might also be able to search the drive for *.mdf files

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jb61264Author Commented: 2014-02-13

I copied all of the .mdf files to folders on a separate machine. Can I reinstall Sharepoint Services 3, SQL Server, and Project Server on this machine now and then reload the mdb files I copied back into the new installation? or is there an easier way to extract the data in the .mdb files?

The other approach would be to stand up a new wss 3.0 instance on a new or the existing server and attach the databases.

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jb61264Author Commented: 2014-03-24

Anybody know of "instructions" somewhere that will help me reload the databases back into my re-installation of everything? I saved all the database files to another machine and am now going to try to reinstall/rebuild the server with the exact same installation I had before the update occured